Enhanced Comprehension of the Pathogenicity of Splicing Variants

Despite the availability of various in silico prediction tools, accurately assessing the pathogenicity of splice-region variants remains limited. In this study, 18 splice-region variants of uncertain significance (VUSs) were functionally characterized using either in vitro (minigene) or in vivo (RT-PCR) experiments. The impacts of in-frame mutants on the indicated protein were further analyzed by modeling the three-dimensional protein structures. The accuracy of different in silico prediction tools (SpliceAI, varSEAK, and Splicing Prediction Pipeline) was also compared.